Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/305

 times, against the law, which is utterly defied in this respect all over the country, men would come over the scorching moor at eventide to set their fell net, the square paratoio with its fettered call-bird, and would watch all night at peril of their lives from the swamp-gases, and at daybreak would carry away their poor fluttering struggling prey. But even these were few and far between, because the fever and ague of the marshes had terrors enough to daunt and conquer greed.

In summer she and Zefferino had these moors to themselves, and even Zefferino had been more alarmed at the heat and the fever than she, and stayed for days together upon the wooded spur of his native mountain, where the miasma seldom reached.

So the long days went by, one by one, and were not long to her; and at noontide she slept soundly and dreamlessly within the cool solitude of the tombs, safe as a mole in his castle, refreshed as a coot on the breast of the pool. In the short nights, above all when they were moonlit, she did not care to sleep; she sat at the entrance of the graves with the white dog like a carved marble thing at her feet, and watched the sylvan